Laudato Si: The Return of Catholic Anti-Modernism?…

(CUSA) – This analysis is a bit superficial but there is an interesting parallel with the Syllabus of Errors on Pius IX.

I think this piece does not recognize the 1864 attempt to reject “enlightened liberalism” but the comparison is worth consideration. —Ed.

R.R. RENO—

Although he endorses the consensus view about global warming, in what may be an internal contradiction Francis describes “the scientific and experimental method” itself as part of the problem. It “is already a technique of possession, mastery, and transformation.”

There’s not the slightest suggestion in Laudato Si that the modern scientist contemplates or savors the truths of nature. Science disenchants, measures, dissects, and otherwise prepares the world for us to dominate and control.

Technology is even worse.

For nearly two hundred years, “progress” in the West has largely mean ever-expanding technological achievement from steam ships to trains to cars to the jet airplane.

This has a creation-denying, God-denying logic. Technology seeks “a lordship over all.”

Laudato Si does not explain how modern science can recover a sense of humility and wonder, nor does it lay down a natural-law framework for the proper development of technology.

There’s no application of Catholic social doctrine to help us think in a disciplined way about how to respond to environmental threats, or how to reform global capitalism. That would have reflected the Gaudium et Spes agenda as carried forward by the last two popes…